Recommend me a new top of the range PC!

I was looking at dell alien ware:

But i got a feeling we could do better!

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I will always stand by building your own because the RAM and the PSU etc inside of that PC are going to be Dell proprietary parts… at least the last time I knew that’s what they were still doing.

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Agreed @Spitfire better to build it then any prebuilt better deals better products etc if you got something like a fry’s electronics in your area they have people that can help walk you through the process

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I bought a dell alienware r9 from my cousin about 18 months ago as It was cheap. I’ve never even hooked it up to test it. I totally forgot I had it there until I’d seen this post. Think I’ll clean it up and test it over the weekend and stick it on gumtree :thinking:

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Building a PC will save you money and it’s actually not a tremendously difficult thing to do.

https://www.logicalincrements.com/ is a good place to start for suggestions on parts with example builds at a bunch of different budget levels.

PCPartPicker.com is the bible here, it’s great for comparing prices from a bunch of different places, it lets you know whether that price depends on a rebate, and it’ll tell you if all the parts actually work together. An added bonus is that if you later decide to upgrade you will already know where the parts go, and you’ll be able to switch out individual pieces rather than redoing the whole rig.

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Always build your own… forget all the loaded crap they send with built assembly line PCs.

I was always an AMD fan. Couldn’t ever really seem to beat the bang for the buck. The friends were always on me about Intel but I’d still kick their asses in CSGO with my “toaster” according to them. It’s been a while since I’ve kept up with the company’s as I haven’t gamed seriously in years now bu it’s always rewarding building your own no matter what direction you go.

I’ve built my last two computers First one I built in 2010. Was a real work horse and is still being used to this day with just a few upgrades over the years. Its now more of a net surfer for the garage. The one I’m on now does everything I need it to and is easily upgradable. You’ll thank yourself and everyone else reccomending it later! haha

Good luck!

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were all assuming you want to play video games, and i guess were assuming your budget is at least US$2500. im a generation behind (am4 not am5) so the thing im absolutely not sure about here is the CAS latency for the RAM, but other than that this comes in under alienware price at much better performance. these are my prices in the USA however but just a rough draft for you. anyone else feel free to correct it.

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i used to think so as well but have seen some great rigs for under $2k that would be hard to put together for that.

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100000x build your own.

Much more future proof and way better bang for your buck.

I built my own mac/hackintosh… and had I bought those specs directly from Apple I would have paid 4x the price.

If you’re not really into that though you can’t really go wrong with a nice Alienware rig. You could also check out the Asus Rog series, or the HP Omen.

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i used to build my own, and yes, you can set up some really nice stuff with good value - but for a few years now honestly (unless you know and want exact/specific things) there are great brand/computers that will offer more or the same great results as a good DIY - without having to spend time locating parts and putting it together.

it all depends on your budget. any i7/9 (if youre doing heavy video) or i5 (if youre just using basic shit) Razer Blade, Asus Vivobook will offer great bang for buck (also some with amd ryzens are great but get a lil more tricky if you dont understand clockspeeds/turbo/threads/core comparisons).

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I’d only build your own if you have a Micro Center near you. They have awesome bundle deals. Easy to return parts if something craps out, don’t have to RMA anything. There are some good deals on pre-builts as well. I’m not up to spec on what’s new these days. Still running a 7700k, 1080ti, and 32gb of DDR4 RAM

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I built my computer not a couple years ago. I learned off of YT to get the confidence to build one. Pretty easy when it was time to put everything together.

Asus Tuf gaming mother board, AMD 3900x, Sapphire 5700XT graphics card, 16gb of ram, 500 gb of storage.
I should have got the 1 terrabyte storage and bumped up to 32 gb of ram but those can easily be upgraded.

I’d stay clear of alienware. Overhyped bad hardware.
You can build a better PC on PC Part picker. Give us your budget and some of us could build out a badass top end build within your budget or you could use go off someone elses build on the site.

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Razer is absolute garbage and no one should monetize them.

Asus is 6 years into a 20 year security audit due to leaving backdoors in all their networking products.

Alienware/msi/cyberpower/iBuyPower you’re paying at least $500 just because it has their name on the side of the box. The latter ones also like to mod the bios of the aftermarket boards they use so you can’t flash bios updates from the original OEM, possibly locking you out of windows updates and other issues.

Anything at best buy or similar consumer product is made to fall apart shortly after the warranty is up. Especially HP products.

Build your own if it’s a desktop. If it’s a laptop, there isn’t actually a good option, but researching issues with whatever models you find interesting would be heavily advised.

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+1 for build your own. A friend just went through the same exercise. He showed us which pre-built he was looking at and by the time we finished building one online for similar money it had a 13900k, faster ram, better PSU and a 4090 which is Waaayy better than the one he looked at and will last many more years before it’s considered slow! He got the shop to build it for a small fee and install W10 instead of W11 which tests better frames for gaming. Still gets warranty too :slight_smile:

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I also vote the build your own route. I did that a few years ago… dropped $5K and build my dream machine. These new Ryzen CPUs are pretty sick. I water cooled mine… I also went with all PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD storage in mine. It’s blazing fast. I have a killer 2160p high speed 4K gaming monitor and high end Asus Strix GPU too… Microscope Flight Simulator looks amazing on it. I bought all the parts on Newegg. Me and my buddy sat down and put it together.

If I wasn’t going to build my own and was gonna hire someone I’d probably go with xoticpc.com or have ibuypower.com build it for me.

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why? i had a razer blade i7 not too long ago, never gave much issues. but im asking for real, are there any sec issues like the asus (i didnt know about that btw, thanks!)? or do you mean like thyre cheaply built?

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The majority of the razor products are cheaply built and generally don’t last despite their high price tag. Their software is borderline malicious. Customer support and warranty isn’t great. I’ve seen their keyboards cause blue screens. Numerous models of mice misclick and/or bad tracking. Headphones fall apart. Laptops mostly plastic, parts non-existent or crazy expensive. I would just avoid in general no matter the product.

I get needing a gaming laptop and there isn’t a good choice there. I don’t really have a better alternative… some of the msi seem okay but still part issues. I generally would just expect any to fail at some point. You’re putting high-end, lots of heat generating components, really close together. It’s just a matter of time. Really would recommend building a gaming desktop instead. Use PCPartPicker or hothardware like has already been said, and keep a laptop for more work/general use, and light gaming oriented. Preferably one made of metal and not plastic that falls apart in a year or two.

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My acer predator has held up for hardcore gaming the last 2 years ive owned it. But, I agree if your gaming at home you would be dumb not to build a desktop. My acer laptop gets hot as hell and im honestly surprised nothing has failed. You could probably cook an egg behind the exhaust ports when im playing gpu intensive games.

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Only tip i have is if you dont care about ray tracing go with amd gpu. If you are planning on running ray tracing go with nvidia. Nvidia is definitely better for ray tracing. But, amd is better bang for the buck if your not concerned with ray tracing.

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What about gaming laptops – do they exist? :sweat_smile: :wave:

:evergreen_tree:

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